NAU town hall focuses on Yuma's need for university

Community leaders agree on the need for a four-year university in Yuma.

The future may bring that to the city but it will not be dropped on the area's doorstep by the state, said Northern Arizona University President John Haeger. Instead, it will likely come about through strengthening community partnerships with local education and business groups.

"If we were asking that question back in the 1950s or '60s, a state government would build a campus from the ground up. That's not going to happen today, and it's not happening anywhere in the country," Haeger said. "So it's going to grow out of the partnership, I think, between AWC and NAU, and NAU will continue to build its programming. It will have a campus, in a sense, a joint campus with AWC."

The need for more higher education in the area was the topic of a town hall forum Friday at St. Paul's Cultural Center. Haeger was visiting Northern Arizona University in Yuma as part of the campus' 20-year anniversary.

The event marked not only NAU's presence in Yuma but where it would go, and where the community needed it, in the future.

In addition to Haeger, the panel consisted of Bob McLendon, newly-appointed member of the Arizona Board of Regents; Don Schoening, president of Arizona Western College; Yuma Union High School District Superintendent Toni Badone; Emma Torres, executive director of Campesinos Sin Fronteras; Chris Camacho, president and CEO of Greater Yuma Economic Development Corporation; and Harry Hengl, owner of Western Financial and a member of the NAU Foundation board of directors.

NAU-Yuma currently has approximately 650 students and offers 131 courses - both on the campus it shares with AWC and through the Internet. But Haeger said for too long, NAU treated its Yuma campus as simply an extension of Flagstaff rather than its own entity.

That is changing. NAU-Yuma has been operating as a full-branch campus for the past year. That gives it more independence to develop its own programs and focus on Yuma's unique demographics. It has also made NAU administration take a second look at where they should devote resources, beyond the main campus.

"We've had more communication in the last six months with NAU than we've probably had in six years," said Ken Rosevear, executive director of the Yuma County Chamber of Commerce.

Rosevear was active in founding the Yuma Business/Education Collaborative, a cooperative effort between business leaders and county school superintendents to forge partnerships between the local economy and the learning community.

Haeger said enrollment at NAU-Yuma has not been going up as quickly as they'd like, in part because of a lack of program development. But that is changing. Over the past year resources have been put toward new nursing and biology degrees, as well as expansions in engineering classes.

The university is partnering with Yuma Regional Medical Center to offer a bachelor's degree in nursing. Haeger said the next goal was more engineering.

"A four-year engineering degree I think is very important, given the industries that are already in Yuma," he said.

The challenge for educators is getting more students here into higher education. Badone said having a university presence created a mind-set where students saw college as a possibility.

"The whole experience of a university, if it's in our own backyard, is much more attractive," Badone said.

It is not only attractive to students. Camacho said a university presence is key to bringing high-wage industries to an area.

"We're isolated from the rest of the state. Universities catalyze economic development," Camacho said. "We'll continue to grow in very low-wage to moderate-wage sectors but if we really want to bring high-wage companies here, the community has to commit to a university."

Another driving force in the area is the presence of Mexico and Haeger said Yuma's status as a border town made it extremely ripe for development. He said the University of Texas in El Paso has had great success recruiting Mexican students who cross the border to attend class every day.

If NAU-Yuma is going to grow to its full potential, Mexico will be a part of that.

"We're a unique region," Torres said. "We're on the border. Within our region we have one million and a half people, from Mexicali to here."

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Sarah Reynolds can be reached at

sreynolds@yumasun.com or 539-6847.